Sambo Creek: January 11th Play Day at the Beach

The sign of a good day is just how grubby, sun soaked and exhausted you are at the end of it! My friend Larry and I just couldn’t stay in town yesterday so took ourselves off to Sambo Creek on the pretext of having lunch and wound up having a delightful day of exploring, beach walking, sea shell gathering and soaking up brilliant sunshine.  

First of all, you get a chicken bus from the San Juan depot and for 14Lps (about 70 cents) you board a retired North American school bus and begin the journey. Sambo Creek is about 16 km east of La Ceiba but it’ll take you about 40 minutes to get there as the bus stops at various locations within the city, then numerous times along the highway to collect workers, families and school children for delivery all along the way and into Corozal (another Garifuna village on the Caribbean Sea).

You turn off the highway and narrowly squeak through tiny one lane roads, paved and dirt wondering when, not if, the driver will clip a building and are dropped off at one of the ‘depot’ points. Nothing is labelled so you just look for a kiosk where folks are gathered and start your wanderings from there.

This is a small Garifuna village set directly along the Caribbean Sea which features various small restaurants and is especially known for tours to Cayos Cochinos which you can see in the distance. I’m planning a day trip to Cayos sometime soon, so will tell you more about them when I actually do it.

There are a couple of fresh water creeks that come down from the mountains to empty into the sea and provide ample opportunity for laundry and bathing for everyone. Bath time for the kids involves an extended period of sheer play time for everyone; splashing, floating, swimming and just generally having a whole lot of fun.

                                                                               If you want to walk the beach west of the village, you have to cross the outlet so it’s off with the shoes (or flip flops for me) and in you go. The first shock of the cold water is just that but soon feels simply delicious after the hot sands and sun. Even knee deep the current is strong so I tend to slowly feel my way across to avoid falling over and soaking my camera – who cares about the clothes, they’ll dry fast enough!

The beaches here are surprisingly clean compared to La Ceiba; folks do clean up the plastic that washes ashore and there is an amazing amount of seashells simply everywhere. I’m a ‘water baby’ (a Cancer, the crab, by the Zodiac) and just can’t resist the call of the waves and sand. There’s no greater hardship for me than to walk the beach for exercise and NOT stopping to pick up seashells!   

We wandered along paths between houses and through yards, making our greetings as we passed folks wondering who these crazy gringos were and where we were going.

We crossed trestle bridges and once I heard the sound of children splashing and shrieking with glee, we veered off the road bed and down a path through the bush to find yet another swimming hole crowded with kids and folks doing yet more laundry in the distance.

We stopped at pulperias for cold bags of water and sodas, ate our lunch of grilled fresh fish at a small hotel next to the disco (closed thankfully!) and slowly made our way back to the bus kiosk just in time to catch the 3:20 back to La Ceiba.

End of the day results:  filthy with beach sand and salt spray; possessor of a huge handful of sea shells; belly full of fish, rice and beans and plateno; tired legs and sleepy eyes; sun crinkled skin and lots of photos.

Conclusion: An excellent play day at the beach! Wish you could have joined me but hope the photos and story will warm up your day for you Northerners in Canada!

Blessed be, Stephanie